I'm not a big sci fi guy but do enjoy the genre. I was wondering what movie takes place at the latest date in the future. I mean, Orwell didn't do to good with 1984. Ar there any movies or shows or even books that take place in like 1,000,000 A.D.? like 998,000 years from now? later?
I don't remember the exact amount, but the original version of The Time Machine racked up a pretty impressive display on his date counter.
I'm not a fan of the Warhammer series but I believe that takes place WAY in the future. The year 40,000 if I'm not mistaken.
I was going to start a whole topic on this, but this seems like an OK place to bring it up. I think that movies set in the future are almost always supposed to be further in the future than they say for some reason, so there should be a formula, like you add a zero to the date they say. Maybe when a screenplay is set in one million AD, they usually change it to 2012 or something, so that's why they have insanely advanced technology in the near future so much (immortality, anti-gravity, FTL space travel, teleportation, androids that pass for human, etc)
http://davemunger.blogspot.com
Wow 40,000 into the future ! I think they probably forgot about us by then. Image where man might or might not be in 40,000 years.
I know WARHAMMER 40K is a game series published by Games Workshop, but did they actually make a movie about it?
Isn't the sun supposed to blow up in 5 million years or something? Imagin if no one did anything! that'd be just like us "oh were we supposed to have a plan?"
What about George Pal's "The Time Machine"? Rod Taylor travels 800,000 years into the future. That's a looooong time from now, eh?
That would be the original "Time Machine." I don't know how far, but the remake also went a great distance into the future. Which I believe created some criticism on how scientifically accurate the film was. For example, would people still be speaking perfect English that far into the future?
Ya want a loooooong time frame? Try junior high school cafiteria.
And no pizza burgers in sight!
Dune is over 30,000 years in the future, I think.
Ed
How far forward was Asimov's "Foundation" series?
Sun's supposed to go in about 5 billion years, I think.
The Sun is halfway through it's 10 billion year life-cycle but before that, at some point before that though, Sol will expand to over 100 times its current size engulfing the inner planets before finally exhausting all its fuel and becoming a brown dwarf... I think.
Wasn't the original Dune like 10,000 years but then progressed quite a lot with the last book being several thousand years after that?
The Foundation series was a lway forward... I don't think they said how exactly far though. It was sufficiently far ahead though, that people had actually forgotten about Earth. As in - there were all kinds of myths about it... people found it hard to believe that we all came from one planet. It was certainly thousands of years into the future.
Although, I can see why people are so loathe to set something more than a few hundred years into the future. It's a world that just gets so far from everything you know, you might as well start with a whole new history etc. Also, given the past thousand years it's fair to say that predicting what the world will be like then is very hard.
I think someone said, that a few decades ago, you had authors writing about might galaxy spanning empires in the distant future but now, it's a struggle for sci-fi authors to say something even a few years into the future.
OH MY GOD! We're all doomed when the sun is finished! Why did you guys have to start discussing this now, you've ruined my day...I'm going to sit here and worry about this for the next 5 billion years!
Anyway...Slightly off topic here but I'm often amused when I watch a movie that was set in the future but I'm watching it the year it was supposed to be or later. An example is Escape From NY. It was set in 1997 or 99 (I think) and although there wasn't any wild technology in that movie, society was way different. Manhattan island was converted into a prison, funny stuff. I also find the old analog style meters and gauges that they use on spaceships, such as on the original Star Trek series, funny. These things don't make movies bad but it's always fun to see someone's idea of how things will be and how different things really are.
Post Edited (01-12-05 08:15)
I think Star Trek: TNG actually did a fairly good job of inventing a comuter-user interface sufficiently futuristic; it was all touch sensitive, flexible/configurable, integrated with everything else, etc...it was pretty advanced compared to what we use today
Since Foundation and War Hammer were never made into movies I guess it's a tossup between Dune and the Time Machine. Which one goes further out?
Well, a semi-Official timeline in my old "Dune Encyclopedia" indicates roughly 29,000 years between now and the book "God Emperor of Dune". Since we are talking films, Dune takes place 24,000 years in the future.
Ed
.....for those who missed it B4.
Its definately The Time machine., inthe time machine, the treaveller ends up eight hundred thousand years from now ( 8 with 5 zeros) humanity is divided in two, morlocks and eloi, a human agrarian culture and an ape like mechanical culture.
both suck!
Freaky!
I can't believe nobody brought up Planet of the Apes. I forget how many years the counter said, but I would think it was pretty far out. Time Machine probably takes the cake. I didn't like the recent version, but the scene where the moon comes apart was very well done.
I think any movie going past 4,000-5,000 years -- if it wants to be realistic -- needs to deal with the eventual evolution of humans into something else.
Unless there's an explanation for why we'd stay nearly the same like extreme longevity, time dialation, or whatever.
I still say if you alllow for tv series that Hichicker's Guide To The Galaxy takes the prize with The Restauraunt At The End Of The Universe. Hard to top that
Then again, as we get better at adapting our surroundings to suit our present form, there is less reason for our form to adapt to our surroundings. Could be that more advanced technology would halt, or at least slow, evolution. There are quite a few animals that haven't changed much in millions of years, simply because they were just right for their habitat. If we make our habitat just right for us, would the same not also be true?
Barring some catastrophe, I'd be more likely to expect changes due to genetic engineering or cybernetic augmentation.
Either that, or defects creeping in, due to the fact that certain flaws might become less of an obstacle to living and reproducing. For example, somebody has a hereditary defect that is usually fatal. It's easily corrected by surgery, he gets married and passes the trait onto three or four children who, if they don't develop the condition, might at least carry the gene. Of course, genetic engineering might fix that.
I think distant future stuff, at least in books, usually assume certain things, like society collapsing at some point so that natural selection reasserts itself, Clarke's Law coming into effect, whatever's left of civilization being so decadent that no one knows how anything works anyway... And of course, the giant red sun and lengthened days that show everyone how long it's been. Movies don't seem to have the same rules. I think the main rule there is that they write things as if it were 1,000+ years in the future, but give the date as 100 years in the future.
Very interesting thought AndyC. Medical technology itself allows people with certain conditions to live and procreate when they otherwise wouldn't. I think technology has a huge effect on evolution, at least in terms of preventing certain things from becoming extinct. But that in itself doesn't stop it (I don't think) so much as changes its direction. In fact, if you argue that developing technologies are a part of nature (because humans are a part of nature) and a part of the way humans adapt, then it's all fair game in a Darwinian sense.